This work offers a detailed comparison of the historical visions of both Foucault and Habermas, using Marx as a modernist contrast. The book clearly illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of each thinker's theory for the productive analysis of history and society, relating the work of each to current debates over modern and postmodern theory.

While Steven Best engages these debates throughout the book, he challenges the claim that there are sharp lines of difference between the modern and the postmodern. Instead, he argues that the differences between Foucault and Habermas, both in relation to each other and to Marx, are best understood as competing responses within modern theory itself - responses that attempt to articulate Hegelian and Nietzschean visions of history.

Avoiding partisan defenses of one theorist over another, Best shows that the problems of each are illuminated through the perspectives of the others.